Pages

Flowering trees - Cassia fistula (बहावा)

grape bunches-like flowers

IIT Bombay hots many flowering trees, which are unusual to find in Mumbai city. This is the first article in the series of "flowering trees". The series will be covering details about some of impressive trees present on the campus.

Tree for today isCassia fistula, commonly known by Amaltaas / Golden shower tree or Indian Laburnum [1]. In Marathi it is named as 'Bahava' (बहावा).In Ayurvedic medicine, golden shower tree is known as aragvadha, meaning "disease killer" [2].Its a tropical ornamental tree, may reach up-to 50 feet height. It is host plant LHP for Common emigrant and Mottled emigrant butterfly species.

Golden shower tree is obvious name due to bright and cheerful display by thousands of fragrant small flower. Pendant like (grape bunches-like)bouquet of golden colored yellow flowers are eye catching. These flowers are attractive to bees and butterflies [1]. Flowering season for the tree is in the months of March to May. Sometimes the tree is seen without a single leaf when flowering. The golden shower tree is the national flower Thailand; its yellow flowers symbolize Thai Royalty [2]. Its also state flower of Kerala. A postal stamp was issued by the Indian Postal Department to commemorate this tree.

Subscribe To

The essence of life is to find something you really love and then making the daily experience worthwhile. I think the purpose of life is to be useful, to be responsible, to be honorable, to be compassionate. It is, after all, to matter: to count, to stand for something, to have made some difference that we lived at all.